The present invention relates to wireless digital communications, and more particularly to space-time diversity transmission systems and methods.
Spread spectrum wireless communications utilize a radio frequency bandwidth greater than the minimum bandwidth required for the transmitted data rate, but many users may simultaneously occupy the bandwidth. Each of the users has a pseudo-random code for “spreading” information to encode it and for “despreading” (by correlation) received spread spectrum signals and recovery of information. Such multiple access typically appears under the name of code division multiple access (CDMA). The pseudo-random code may be an orthogonal (Walsh) code, a pseudo-noise (PN) code, a Gold code, or combinations (modulo-2 additions) of such codes. After despreading the received signal at the correct time instant, the user recovers the corresponding information while other users' interfering signals appear noise-like. For example, the interim standard IS-95 for such CDMA communications employs channels of 1.25 MHz bandwidth and a pseudo-random code pulse (chip) interval TC of 0.8138 microsecond with a transmitted symbol (bit) lasting 64 chips. The recent 3GPP wideband CDMA (WCDMA) proposal employs a 3.84 MHz bandwidth and the CDMA code length applied to each information symbol may vary from 4 chips to 256 chips. Indeed, UMTS (universal mobile telecommunications system) approach UTRA (UMTS terrestrial radio access) provides a spread spectrum cellular air interface with both FDD (frequency division duplex) and TDD (time division duplex) modes of operation. UTRA currently employs 10 ms duration frames partitioned into 15 time slots with each time slot consisting of 2560 chips (TC=0.26 microsecond).
The air interface leads to multipath reception, so a RAKE receiver has individual demodulators (fingers) tracking separate paths and combines the finger results to improve signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The combining may use a method such as the maximal ratio combining (MRC) in which the individual detected signals in the fingers are synchronized and weighted according to their signal strengths or SNRs and summed to provide the decoding. That is, a RAKE receiver typically has a number of DLL or TDL code tracking loops together with control circuitry for assigning tracking units to the strongest received paths. Also, an antenna array could be used for directionality by phasing the combined signals from the antennas.
Further, UTRA allows for space-time block-coding-based transmit antenna diversity (STTD) in which, generically, channel bits b0, b1, b2, b3 (values ±1) are transmitted as the sequence b0, b1, b2, b3 by antenna 1 and simultaneously transmitted as the sequence −b2, b3, b0, −b1 by antenna 2. Note that interpreting (b0, b1) and (b2, b3) as two complex numbers (e.g., QPSK or QAM symbols) implies the sequence transmitted by antenna 2 differs from the sequence from antenna 1 by a rotation of π/2 in a two-complex-dimensional space followed by complex conjugation. See Alamouti, A Simple Transmit Diversity Technique for Wireless Communications, IEEE J. Selec. Areas on Comm. 1451 (1998).
STTD is a diversity technique in the sense that it provides redundancy for the transmitted symbols. In particular, (1) it provides full transmit diversity gain without bandwidth expansion, (2) there is no loss in code rate, and (3) it is an orthogonal code and thus allow simple maximum likelihood detection by a maximum ratio combiner followed by a demodulator. When used with a modulation scheme of order M (e.g., QPSK has M=4 and 16QAM has M=16) the complexity of the detector is proportional to 2M.
Recently, attempts to generalize orthogonal codes with full diversity and are noted in Naguib et al, Increasing Data Rate over Wireless Channels, IEEE Signal Proc. Mag. 76 (May 2000). However, it was proven that orthogonal space-time block codes with full diversity for more than 2 antennas (with complex symbols) suffer from rate loss. That is, for more than 2 transmit antennas, space-time block codes with all three of the foregoing properties do not exist. Thus there are various possibilities of partial fulfillment of the three properties.
More specifically, space-time block codes with symbol constellation rotation appear in Xin et al, Space-Time Diversity Systems Based on Unitary Constellation-Rotating Precoders, Proc. ICASSP 2429 (2001). The space-time rotation codes can achieve full diversity gain and good “coding gain”, which can be measured in terms of distance from the full transmit diversity curves. However, this class of codes do not inherit any orthogonal structure and the complexity of the maximum likelihood detector for space-time rotation code is proportional to MP where P is the number of antennas and M the symbol constellation size. Sub-optimal detectors such as linear or iterative minimum mean square error can also be used to reduce the complexity to be proportional to MP3.
Papadias et al, A Space-Time Coding Approach for Systems Employing Four Transmit Antennas, Proc. ICASSP 2481 (2001) and Tirkkonen et al, Minimal Non-Orthogonality Rate 1 Space-Time Block Code for 3+ Tx Antennas, IEEE 6th Int. Symp. on Spread-Spectrum Tech. & Appl. 429 (2000) show for systems with 4 antennas that instead of achieving full orthogonality, one can achieve three-level orthogonality which leads to maximum likelihood detector with complexity proportional to (P/2)MP/2, and for the suboptimal detectors complexity reduces to 16M.
However, these block codes have limited performance.